In a court order entered Thursday, Judge Rudolph Contreras told State Department officials to publish 550 of Hillary Clinton's emails by Friday, another batch by Feb. 19, a third batch by Feb. 26 and a final batch by Feb. 29. (AP Photo)

A federal judge ordered the State Department to publish the rest of Hillary Clinton's private emails in four different batches spread across the month of February, and rejected the agency's request to delay the final document dump until the end of the month.

In a court order entered Thursday, Judge Rudolph Contreras of the U.S. District Court told State Department officials to publish 550 of Clinton's emails by Saturday, another batch by Feb. 19, a third batch by Feb. 26 and a final batch by Feb. 29.

The order represents a victory for Jason Leopold, the Vice News reporter who filed the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for Clinton's emails last year.

The State Department attempted last month to stall the final Clinton email release until after the primary contests in February and until hours before the spate of "Super Tuesday" elections.

But Leopold's legal team successfully argued such a delay would hamper the public's ability to make informed decisions in many of those contests.

In announcing its failure to meet the original court-ordered deadline at the end of January, the State Department said it planned to withhold 37 pages of emails deemed "top secret," the highest level of classification in government.